Similitude (episode)
During an engine performance test, Trip is critically injured and left comatose in sickbay. Phlox suggests that Trip's only hope for survival is the creation of a "mimetic symbiont" – in other words, a clone. Summary The episode begins with a funeral ceremony. Captain Jonathan Archer is praising a dead crewman who appears to be Charles Tucker III. The episode is a flashback of events that happened two weeks earlier. Trip wanted to do some test about compressing the antimatter stream (in the warp core) to get the engine running more smoothly and be able to achieve greater speed. Unfortunately, only seconds after the experiments begins, a primary injector flare forces Trip to do a manual shutdown. While on the top of the warp core, the engineer is then blown by a nearby explosion and falls. In sickbay, Phlox informs Captain Archer that Trip has slipped into a coma due to extensive neural damage. He also proposes to use a Lyssarrian desert larvae to make a clone of Commander Tucker and harvest neural tissues from it. Due to highly sensitive ethical implications, Archer does not make a decision right away. T'Pol then informs Archer that some particles from the the field they are into (also probably the cause of the initial injector flare), are building on the ship's hull. The highly magnetic property of the particles could become a problem if they are not able to clear the field on time. Archer then says that he allowed the cloning procedure, scarifying the ethical implication to the mission's objective. The clone then grows from a baby to a child and eventually begins to ask questions about its existence. The captain tells him the truth. As Sim (the clone) ages, the repairs to the warp drive go on, but slowly. As the particles building on the hull have a dampening effect, every system on the ship will fail before the repairs are completed. By the time Sim becomes an adult, he helps with the repairs. He even comes up with a solution to the particles problem. At about the same stage, he confesses "his" feelings for T'Pol. Some time after, Phlox informs the captain that, according to his predictions, Sim won't survive the transplant. What would only mean a couple of days for everyone still means half a lifetime for Sim. The clone also informs the captain about an enzyme he learned about that could slow down the aging process. However, based on a complete layout from Phlox, Archer says that the odds are too thin and that he is not willing to jeopardize the mission (in case of a failure, the clone would have become too old for the transplant). A little later, Sim plans an escape, but he aborts it. When the captain meets him in the launch bay, Sim says that what stopped him was the thought of his sister. He insists on the fact that she was his sister as well as Trip's. Just before the surgery, T'Pol comes to Sim's quarter to say her goodbyes with a kiss (a thing she hadn't even done with Trip at the time), showing that he meant something to her, more than just being a clone to save Trip's life. The episode ends in the continuation of the trailer scene where we understand that the dead crewman is Sim. The crew, including a recovered Trip, pay their last respects as Sim is placed in a torpedo tube and fired out into space. Background Information *This episode marks the first written contribution of the new Co-Executive Producer, Manny Coto. *This episode was chosen as the #3 fan favorite in an on-line poll conducted by UPN. It was re-broadcast on March 25, 2005 in that context. Note: The poll was conducted before the final 6 episodes of the series had aired. *Adam Taylor Gordon, who played a younger version of Tucker in "The Xindi", played the version of Sim at age 8 in this episode. *The model Archer played with as a boy in "Broken Bow" reappears in this episode. *This is the first episode chronologically to have funeral on board the starship. *This episode is very similar to the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Tuvix" in which a minor character must give his or her life through a medical operation held within sickbay to save one of the main characters. A notable difference however, is that in "Tuvix" the Chief medical officer, The Doctor, refused to perform the procedure because it would result in killing an innocent being. Captain Kathryn Janeway ended up performing the procedure herself. Links and References Co-Stars *Adam Taylor Gordon as Sim-Trip (age 8) *Shane Sweet as Sim-Trip (age 17) *Maximillian Orion Kesmodel as Sim-Trip (age 4) References A-3 injector port; A Night at the Opera; antimatter injector; Archer, Henry; architecture; Bedford; birthmark; cerebrum; Cochrane, Zefram; coma; clone; Dennis; Denobulan; diagnostic; DNA; dollhouse; engineer; Enrique; epidermal layer; ethics; EV team; feces; ferric ion; field coil; funeral; fusion overburn; garden snake; genetic memory; genetic sequencing; glue; horse; injector flare; key lime pie; kilodyne; kilometer per hour; Lyssarrian; Lyssarrian desert larvae; Lyssarrian homeworld; Lyssarrian Prime Conclave; magnetism; Martian; Marx Brothers; Massaro; medical tricorder; mimetic simbiot; nucleonic particle; neuro-pressure; neural nodes; Orsic fern; phase cannon; plasma assembly; plasma rifle; playing cards; REM cycle; salve; Shuttlepod 1; Shuttlepod 2; Steven; system tap; targeting scanners; toilet; teething stage; Tucker, Elizabeth; Velandran Circle; The War of the Worlds; warp drive; Xindi weapon |next= }} Category:ENT episodes de:Ebenbild es:Similitude nl:Similitude